Proposed changes to 'related links' sections of articles etc

Folks,

THE PROBLEM

I've been struggling for a while to come up with a better way of linking between articles on the site, given that we are constantly adding more articles, or finding new places to link to.  The main issue is keeping 'related links' sections up to date without spending half my time maintaining old stuff.

I've also been (slightly less) worried about what is the difference between the 'related links' section in an article (top right) and the 'further reading' section.



A PROPOSAL

I'd like to propose a new approach that might help.

First, I think the 'further reading' sections continue unchanged.

The main change is to the related links section.  I think this should contain links to the topic index and techniques index only, unless there is some relevant 'getting started' material, in which case that too.




A WORKED EXAMPLE

So, for example, let's take http://www.w3.org/International/articles/language-tags/

Currently the related links section contains:

 RFC 3066: Tags for the Identification of Languages

 ISO 639: Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages

 ISO 3166: Codes for Country Names

 IANA language tag registry

 Authoring Techniques for XHTML & HTML Internationalization: 
  Specifying the language of content 1.0

W3C I18N resource index: Language declarations and language negotiation



We could change that to:

 Topic index: language [links to the language section of the index]

 Techniques index: language  [links to the language section of the index]

Of course, if appropriate, we may link to more than one section in each index.



THE BENEFITS

This should make it easier to write an article, but most important will make it simple to expose the user to much more relevant and up-to-date material without a maintenance overhead.

This can also help where an article is translated into several languages. We wouldn't have to go through the pain of updating several pages with new links and translating them.

It would also likely standardise things for users, and get them more used to using the indexes.  Note this comment from a feedback form related to 
http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-doc-charset.en.html

=======================
First can I say I\'ve found the information on internationalization here invaluable. It\'s clear, concise, and written in a way that\'s very easy-to-follow. ... So THANK YOU!

I have one comment/suggestion, which is for more cross-linking between articles. For example I\'d have liked a link from this article directly to related topics such as http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-escapes . I\'ve found myself often going down a blind-alley, thinking \"I know I saw a useful link about this somewhere\" and rooting back through other pages and by browser back button trying to find things.

=======================

There's also a fringe benefit in that it encroaches less into the right hand column, making it easier to use side notes near the top of the article.





REQUEST

Please let me know what you think.  I will try it for the composite messages and text re-use articles that we decided to publish last Wednesday.

Cheers,
RI



============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
http://www.w3.org/International/
http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/

Received on Friday, 24 March 2006 11:56:17 UTC